Dr. Carl Perrin spent a half a century trying to save Western Civilzation by teaching thousands of college freshmen important stuff, like the difference between its and it's. Now he is ready to go on to bigger and better things.

Monday, February 17, 2014

ANOTHER GRANGELY STORY

A LOVE SO RARE

Beulah was sitting on the sagging
couch watching television. Every once in a while she would lean her heavy body
forward, take a chocolate from the half-empty box in front of her and pop it
into her mouth, chewing daintily until it was gone.

She
was watching her favorite soap opera, “The Gathering Gloom.” Aurora, the show’s
heroine, was reading a love note from Derek, one of her ex-husbands. A tear
welled up in Beulah’s eye and began rolling down her cheek. She didn’t get love
notes from anyone, not since she and Broderick Bickford had broken up—not that
he had ever written love notes to her even when they were going together. She
reached for another chocolate, picked it up with pudgy little fingers and stuck
it into her mouth.

She
heard Tommy White, the mailman, drop the mail through the slot. She waited for
the next commercial to see what Tommy had left. No one ever wrote to her. It
was always just bills for her mother. So when she did pick up the mail, she was
surprised to see a letter addressed to her. She took her letter back to the
living room and sat on the couch to read it.

It
was not a letter but a poem:

As
I sit in my lair,

Dreaming
of your hair,

Floating
on the air,

Do
I dare, do I dare

Hope
that you could care

With
a love so rare

That
I could hardly bear?

Beulah
had never read anything so beautiful, but who could have sent it? There was no
signature, no explanation. She didn’t recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t
Broderick’s. He could never have written anything like that anyway. He did not
have a sensitive soul like Beulah, who saw the poetry, the drama, the music in
life all around her.

Just
then she heard a knock on the door. Beulah hurried to see if it was the man who
had written the poem to her, but it was her friend, Lucinda Fogg. Lucinda was
so tiny that it almost looked as though Beulah could, if she wanted, pick
Lucinda up and stick the young woman in her pocket. Lucinda was returning a
book she had borrowed, Tessie’s Torrid
Tryst.

“It
was wonderful,” the young woman said. “I especially like the part where Tessie
and Tyrone were marooned on a desert island. While I was reading it, I kept
thinking about me and Harrison Plunket being marooned on an island.”

Beulah
showed her the poem she had received in the mail.

“Oh,
that’s wonderful,” Lucinda said. “It just makes chills go up and down your
spine. Is it from Broderick?”

“No,
me and Broderick had a fight and broke up again. I don’t even know who sent it
to me.”

“I’d
just die if I could get Harrison Plunket to write a pome like that.”

“Have
you got Harrison to ask you out yet?”

“No,
he don’t even seem to know that I’m alive. This is fated to be a one-sided
romance,” the young woman sighed. “I know I ain’t got no chance with him—not
with so many beautiful women around.”

Poor
Lucinda, she was not just tiny, but thin, straight up and down. She was plain
all right, but if you looked at her closely, you could see that she had a
beautiful soul.

The next morning Beulah’s mother
woke her up before she left for work. She held an envelope in her hand.

“This
was under the side door,” she explained. “I thought you’d probably want to see
it right away.”

The
handwriting on the envelope was the same as that on the poem she had received
the day before. Inside the envelope was a note:

Dearest
Beulah,

Please
meet me for lunch today at Maisie’s Diner.

Love,

Your
secret admirer

She was so
excited that she got up and called Lucinda Fogg.

“Lucinda!”
she cried excitedly. “I got a note from him. He wants to meet me for lunch!”

“Who?”
the sleepy voice asked.

“You
know! Him! My secret admirer!”

“That’s
wonderful!” Lucinda exclaimed, awake now.

“I
want you to go with me.”

“I
couldn’t go with you—not on a date,” Lucinda protested.

“I
don’t mean go to lunch. I mean just go with me until I meet him and see who he
is. We’re going to meet at Maisie’s Diner at noon.”

At
eleven-thirty Beulah and Lucinda were in sitting in Lucinda’s father’s car,
across the street from Maisie’s Diner, watching the people who walked into the
diner. At about ten minutes of twelve, Beulah saw a young man approaching. He
was wearing a shiny blue suit. A wide, flowered necktie was knotted about an
inch below the top button of his collar. He had horn-rimmed glasses and dark
hair, which he kept brushing off his forehead.

Lucinda
scrouched down in her seat. “Oh, I don’t want him to see me,” she said.

“Why
not? How do you expect him to notice you if he can’t see you?”

Harrison stopped in front of the diner and looked around.
He glanced at his watch. Beulah noticed then that he was holding a bouquet. He
brushed his hair from his forehead and started pacing back and forth in front
of the diner. He looked at his watch again.

It
was Lucinda who first realized it. “I wonder if that’s him,” she gasped.

“Him?”

“You
know. Your secret admirer.”

“Oh
no! If that’s him, I just couldn’t go.”

“No,
you go,” Lucinda insisted. “I guess me and him just warn’t mean for each other.
If I can’t have him, then I’d rather you have him than anyone else.”

“No!
I couldn’t!”

But
Harrison had spotted them. He crossed the
street to where they were. He looked at Beulah and asked, “You got my note?”

Beulah
looked at Lucinda, who whispered, “Go ahead. I want you to go.”

Beulah
got out of the car, and she and Harrison
started to cross over to the diner.

“I
hope you don’t think I’m being to pushy,” the young man said, “but let’s face
it, I’ve always admired you. There aren’t too many people in this town who
appreciate the finer things. Then one day it hit me like a ton of bricks. I
figured it’s better late than never. So I burned the midnight oil to write you
a token of my esteem.”

“It
was just so beautiful,” Beulah murmured. “No one never wrote me no pomes
before.”

“Like
I said, I always knew you appreciated the finer things, so in the last analysis
I decided to take the bull by the horns and strike while the iron was hot. I
had a sneaking suspicion that you and Brick had had a parting of the ways.”

Beulah
looked at him with admiration. “You have such a way with words,” she said.

Then,
just as they were ready to enter the diner, a burly young man approached them.

“Where
do you think you’re going with my girlfriend?” he demanded.

“You
and me ain’t going out together no more, Broderick,” Beulah said. “so I guess I
got a right to go out with whoever I want to.”

“It’s
a crying shame,” Harrison said to him, “that
you can’t let bygones be bygones. To all intents and purposes you and Beulah
have severed your relationship, so it stands to reason that she should be free
to go out with whoever she wants. It’s about time you learned the facts of life.”

“I’ll
teach you the facts of life,” Broderick roared. He lowered his head and started
running toward Harrison. Beulah gaped at
muscular Broderick gathering steam as he rushed toward scrawny little Harrison. She started to scream.

She
needn’t have worried about Harrison, though.
At the last second Harrison stepped aside, and
Broderick ran head-first into a telephone pole. There was a loud crack, and the
pole seemed to move slightly. Broderick landed on the ground moaning, his eyes
swimming out of focus.

Beulah
ran to him and cradled his head in her arms. Harrison
went over to see what he could do.

“It
goes without saying,” he said, “that he was the aggressor in this little
dust-up. I certainly didn’t do anything with malice aforethought, but when jealousy
rears its ugly head, something like this is likely to result.”

“Don’t
talk to me, you brute! What have you done to him?” She turned her attention
back to Broderick and said, “Speak to me, my darling. Are you hurt?”

Broderick
sat up and started looking around, a puzzled expression on his face.

Eben
Danforth had come out of the diner to see what was going on. “Good thing he hit
hisself in the head,” Eben remarked. “He might of hurt hisself otherwise.”

Harrison was standing, a bewildered expression on his
face. Lucinda Fogg came up to him said, “I know how you feel. I know what it is
to be spurned by the one you love.”

Harrison looked at her as though he had never seen her
before.

“If
you need a shoulder to cry on,” the young woman assured him, “you can always
count on me. I’ll always be there for you.”

“Thank
you,” He answered. “You’re like a shot in the arm, a breath of fresh air, just
what the doctor ordered.”

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Dr Carl Perrin

About Me

When Carl Perrin was a wee lad, his father gave him a hatchet for his birthday. Perrin used the hatchet to chop down his father's prize cherry tree. When his dad asked who had cut down the tree, Perrin managed to blame it on his younger brother. That was only fair because the little rat was always getting him in trouble.
Perrin grew up to be an upstanding citizen with strong family values. Like that other great American, Rudy Giuliani, Perrin has shown his family values by getting married three times.